Sky subscribers near 9 million

This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Wednesday April 30 2008. It was last updated at 08:32 on April 30 2008.

Satellite group BSkyB added 56,000 new customers in the first quarter of 2008 to take its customer base to almost 9 million.

It was the best performance in the new year quarter, a traditionally slack time for sales, for three years.

Sky now has a total of 8,888,000 pay-TV customers in the UK and Ireland, keeping it on track to hit 10 million by 2010.

The company said that it had signed up another 262,000 customers to its personal video recorder service Sky+, putting it in 3,393,000 households, or 38% of its overall base.
Sky Broadband customer numbers were up 229,000 to reach 1,428,000 at the end of March, less than two years after the service was launched.

The company aims to have 3 million broadband customers, or 30% of its subscriber base, by 2010.

Sky said it added 43,000 high-definition subscribers, taking its tally to 465,000 at the end of March. Its Sky Talk telephone business grew by 180,000 to 1,095,000.
Churn, a measure of how many customers left the service, was 10.5%, while Arpu - average revenue per user - hit a record £424.

The company reported a loss of £118m over the nine months to the end of March, factoring in a £474m impairment resulting from the fall in the value of its 17.9% stake in ITV.
This impairment charge included £131m added in the January and March quarter to reflect the continuing decline in ITV's share price.

Sky bought its shares in November 2006 at 135p, more than double the stock's closing price last night of 64.4p.

Sky also reported that revenues were up 10% over the same period to £3.706bn, while its operating profit for the period was £504m, down 18% on last year.